Obama Must Remake Political Persona for Any Second Term

Sept. 3 (Bloomberg) -- There still are Kennedy Democrats;
there are Clinton Democrats. There are fewer Obama Democrats.

This reflects more the president’s style than his substance;
he’s in the mainstream of his party, so popular that any primary
challenge was out of the question.

Yet he remains strangely unfamiliar to some core
constituencies.

If Barack Obama is re-elected, the biggest challenge won’t
be ideological: He’s not the left-winger his opponents depict.
The economy will be the dominant issue, events will shape
others.

Instead, it may be personal, his political persona. Be it
Democratic politicians or members of Congress, campaign
contributors or business leaders, there is a common refrain:
Obama doesn’t much identify with us, or even much respect what
we do.

His relationship with most Democratic members of Congress
lies somewhere between correct and cold. They believe that
personal political loyalties are not an Obama priority.

What makes this more than an insider’s game is that
successful presidents -- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson
(domestically), Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton -- cultivated and
established real political relationships.

Could a re-elected Obama improve in this essential element
of presidential leadership?

Obama Biographer

There is no one more knowledgeable than David Maraniss, who
wrote the best biography of him, “Barack Obama: The Story,”
which traces the 44th president’s family background and life
through his late 20s. He has a unique appreciation of his
subject’s strengths and frailties, and of his psyche.

“Obama,” Maraniss says, “is mischaracterized as aloof.
It’s more a self-imposed detachment. He’s not good at the
visceral transactions of politics.”

The author sees two conflicting sides to Obama. There is
the writer-anthropologist “who looks at the surreal aspects of
the game of politics. He doesn’t want to buy into that game
completely. To be fully engaged makes him uncomfortable
sometimes.” The other side is a “fiercely competitive” man
who appreciates what it takes to succeed and understands
history.

When first elected, Obama supposedly sought to secure his
personal and political identity by emulating Abraham Lincoln’s
“Team of Rivals,” enlisting political opposites to his inner
circle. This included making Hillary Clinton, whom he defeated
in a hotly contested 2008 primary contest, his secretary of
state and keeping on Defense Chief Robert Gates, who served in
that capacity under Obama’s Republican predecessor, George W.
Bush.

Today, the “Team of Rivals” is more appearance than
reality. “He thought it was a great idea and ever since he’s
backtracked, he didn’t really do it,” Maraniss says. When top
appointments are made, the paramount consideration usually is
how the people fit the president’s “comfort” zone.

Congressional Republicans have been unyieldingly partisan;
still the president only goes through the motions of dealing
with them.

In any second term, he’s likely to face divided government,
split public opinion, a lack of any clear mandate, and the need
to make critical appointments, starting with state and Treasury.
That calls for the promise of Obama, not the personal
performance of late.

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who wrote the book on
Lincoln and his “Team of Rivals,” and has spent time with
Obama, says there are precedents for presidents who have
changed. FDR, in his third term, facing a global war, reached
out to adversarial Republicans such as Frank Knox, to be his
secretary of the Navy, and made Henry Stimson his secretary of
war.

Machiavellian Roosevelt

Moreover, Roosevelt, who because of his Machiavellian
proclivities relished playing people off each other, was
straightforward with the key figures in his third term such as
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the top generals.

Goodwin says political polarization may make it even
tougher for Obama than it was for FDR. Republicans were furious
that Stimson and Knox joined Roosevelt’s administration; today’s
Republicans may hate Obama, especially if he is re-elected, even
more than their forerunners hated FDR.

Still, she sees possibilities. “The president,” she says,
“needs to use his keen analytical mind to look at what worked
and what didn’t work in the first term. He needs to see how and
who he spent time with and how he allocated that time.”

Without predicting what he would do, she believes there can
be “an enormous sense of comfort” that comes with a re-election that enables a president to stretch.

Historical analogies are a reach, though they aren’t
without interest.

Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, noted the other
day that he had just finished reading the fourth installment of
Robert Caro’s epic biography of Lyndon Johnson. He thought of
the contrast with Obama. “Johnson,” Bush says, “would have
grabbed people by the shoulders, ears, head. He would have
convinced John Boehner that it was his patriotic duty to step
up. He would have charmed whoever was the guy who needed to be
charmed, or the gal, to get the budget done.”

Obama may not be capable of the personal engagement of a
LBJ or FDR. Still, Maraniss believes, more than most politicians
or most people, he has “throughout his life shown a capacity to
learn and grow and change.”

(Albert R. Hunt is Washington editor at Bloomberg News. The
opinions expressed are his own.)